


The Walk

by TooDistasteful



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Live Action TV)
Genre: Backstory, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2637131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooDistasteful/pseuds/TooDistasteful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The walk never changes. It’s nice to have some things consistent, you figure, and heading home after school has always been the same for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Walk

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything on here in forever, but here you are, a thing. It's useless fluff and some backstory. And of course, written at 5am.

The walk never changes. It’s nice to have some things consistent, you figure, and heading home after school has always been the same for you. Once you were old enough, people stopped bothering you quite so much, and it became an uneventful trip here to take a bus there and return to the shrine. It was long, but you didn’t really mind. It was one of the few times nobody expected anything of you, at least, not directly. You simply packed up your things, checked your agenda to ensure that you had all of the books you would need for your homework, and began your miniature adventure. 

You knew the streets in the area better than you knew some parts of yourself, and the walk itself was calming. It was a good way to shake off the leers of your classmates when you were younger, how they stared and whispered _freak_. Now, it was a good way to find your thoughts, and calm after a day spent attempting to learn under one god and his disciples. You feel torn more often than not. Grandpa wants you to know about the kami, believe in it and see it in everyone. Your father wants you to be a good Catholic, from what you can gather. Neither wants your grades to suffer, but both want to be right. 

All you’ve ever wanted to be is normal. 

From the moment you first woke up in a sweat saying that you’d dreamt your mother had something wrong in her heart, to your first day of school, to the first time the spirits whispered to you through the fire, you’ve wanted no part of it. Your walks are a good way to feel at least a little bit less like an outsider looking in, and more like a part of the city. People don’t often talk about you, or your strange gifts, here. Not much, anyway. The bus is filled with life and chatter, but it’s quiet to you. Nobody has a thing to say to you, and it’s perfect. 

Your walk back to the shrine is planning, always. You lay out how your night has to be, and understand that it is chores, closing the shrine to the public, making supper for yourself and, of course, Grandpa, and then doing your homework before meditation and bed. It doesn’t leave you a lot of time for sleep, but you imagine that few things come in this world without sacrifice. You’re so used to only sleeping for six hours a night that it scarcely bothers you anymore. 

Things continue like this for years, even though your grandfather makes some attempts to mention you possibly getting some friends or lessening your chores here or there. You owe him everything for taking you in when your father wouldn’t have you, and you wouldn’t leave him for the world. You don’t dare tell him that you dream of those things too, sometimes, and that you’re lonely. Sometimes, you think someone’s talking to you on the bus, or looking at you just so when you begin or end your walk. Ultimately, it’s always just your mind playing tricks on you, and you let it go without stressing over it. 

There does come a day that you hear a pair of girls discussing your beauty, however, shooting them a questioning look and nearly shocking yourself when one of them doesn’t look away. You hurry off the bus and make your walk back to the shrine a bit more brisk than anticipated. You had always thought you’d want someone to find you, to give you some great purpose,  but now that she’s definitely following you up the steps to the shrine, you’re panicked. 

And with good reason, you reflect later, holding the red and gold pen in your hand and feeling both its physical and metaphorical weight. You’re a guardian, you have a Princess, you have _purpose_ outside of the four walls the world has given you, and that’s beyond terrifying. You contemplate telling Luna, a very intelligent cat who reminds you a bit too much of your mother by times when she’s being quieter and calmer, that you can’t handle this. Your sleep schedule falls out of balance with the late-night excursions, you begin slacking on your homework. You get your first grade below an A, and it feels like a rotted thing in your gut. 

Failure had never suited you, and the B staring you in the face feels like it. You propose that they start coming to the shrine instead of meeting up at the Crown, figuring that ‘study sessions’ might be something they buy as a plausible cover-up. To your immense relief, they do, seemingly eager to win your trust. But you’ve been broken and rebuilt so many times that you aren’t sure you have any trust left to give, not even when Usagi is doing her best to smile at you just so, or Ami is nodding her understanding. 

Time passes and you find a new routine, with people in your life. You try not to let them in too much, no matter how desperately you want to pull them closer and tighter and never let go, tell them how happy you are that you’ve met them, that you finally have them. Grandpa’s so thrilled that you have friends that he’s trying to do more work around the shrine on his own now. He wants to, he says, he wants you to have a chance at being a normal teenager. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? 

But you’re anything but, and these don’t feel like your friends, not really. Even when Ami teaches you how to play the machines at the arcade one day and you’re exceptionally bad at it, or when you all meet Makoto and she starts bringing things to the study session that she notices you enjoy. You still feel incomplete and distant, and now they expect you to save the world. It’s an immense burden, and you don’t feel like sharing it. Possessive even over something that they brought to you. 

It isn’t until you see her for the first time that you think that, just maybe, this is something you can and do share. She makes it obvious right away that she wouldn’t let any of you handle it, and you’re fine with not having a thing to do with her. Venus is headstrong and stubborn and all of the things about yourself that frustrate you to no end. She tries to do things on her own and it’s so obvious that she’s lonely and refusing to ask for help out of some form of stubborn pride or another. 

Out of everybody in the group, you’re the only one who doesn’t see an immediate similarity between the pair of you. In fact, you can barely stand the golden girl, flipping her hair and spending too much of your free time talking about boys, and not enough sharing her ideas about how to better protect the Princess (and you know it’s not her, even before it becomes clear that it’s been Usagi this _whole time_ and none of you noticed). 

She lightens up, just a bit, but it takes all of you dying and being revived and the world sort of restarting with the power of the crystal to make it happen. The whole experience is surreal, and you don’t really want to think about it too much because you’re pretty sure that normal flew out the window around the time you saw your mother again, and then got ripped away from her to come back here. Unwittingly, you become a bit more broody and spend a lot more time in your own mind. But your walk is still your own, even if they sometimes ruin it by meeting you on the bus. 

It’s only after you’ve known them all for about a year when your entire routine is disrupted. You take two steps outside of your school with your eyes on the sidewalk and your bag over your shoulder before you spy a familiar pair of shoes. Panning up, it’s all you can do to keep from looking totally flabbergasted, even as Minako laughs and grabs your arm. “You always do this walk alone,” she says, motioning vaguely with her free hand, “I thought you might like some company, O Brooding One.”  

You bite back that you enjoy your alone time, and she just looks at you. Or rather, she looks right through you, and you’ve never felt quite so violated in all of your life. She doesn’t say another word for the rest of the walk, but she does grab your arm and pull you into her for a hug before you mount the stairs to the shrine. This process repeats, her wordlessly waiting for you outside of school and you grumbling a bit as she laughs and tells you a bit about her day, this or that cute outfit, and walking you home. You never figure out why she’s doing it, and it becomes less frustrating with time and more just a part of your routine. 

When she gets sick waiting out in the rain for you because you were stuck writing lines after falling asleep in class one morning, you decide the practice is inacceptable. You start taking an alternate route to avoid her when she’s well enough to show up at your school again. Determined, she finds out about it, and begins simply following behind you. A few days later, and she’s racing to catch up. No matter how many times you change your path, she always finds you, and she always walks you home. 

You tell her to stop, shortly after, and she actually looks hurt. “Rei – “ she starts, and you simply huff and storm off. You weren’t known for your patience, but you were for your temper. She wisely avoids you for the next two weeks, and your walk suddenly feels less calming and pensive and more like a self-imposed punishment of sorts, where the sidewalk is a prison and your mind is a man with a whip. Thankfully, she spares you the embarrassment of having to ask her to forgive you. She just shows up, almost the exact day you were starting to break, and wordlessly takes your hand in hers, leading down the sidewalk with a knowing smile and little else. 

Your walk never used to change, but now it’s full of small surprises, like her smile, or something funny that happened during volleyball. Before you know it, you’re in love with her, and you don’t know what to do about it. She makes that easy on you too, however. You’re almost disappointed when you don’t see her outside waiting for you, but it is raining. You left your umbrella at home, so the walk is going to be exceptionally miserable, you figure. No Minako, no umbrella – 

And then there are both, and she’s smiling at you from behind the door you’ve just stepped out of. “Where’s your umbrella, Fire Girl?” she teases, arching an eyebrow when you shrug. “Well, we can’t have your flame going out, now can we? Good think Aino Minako always thinks ahead!” 

The pair of you walk shoulder to shoulder, hands wrapped firmly around one another’s with her talking enough for the pair of you and you occasionally blushing or chiming in with a short quip that probably sounds lame, but she laughs anyway. She even does all of the steps to the shrine with you, in spite of your protests. She says you’ll need to stay dry to avoid getting sick, and she tries to look so serious when she says it that you don’t have the heart to remind her about the wind. Maybe you should’ve, you reason, as you watch it take her umbrella moments later. She laughs and squeals and races you to the top as the pair of you get soaked in the downpour, chests heaving when you dart beneath the eaves of one end of the shrine. 

And she’s beautiful even if her makeup is a little bit smeared, and yours probably is too. Her hair’s matted against her, all sleek gold against a tan she’s earnt after hours of hard work, and her school uniform is clinging to her in all the right ways. Before you can say or do anything, still trying to catch your breath, she grabs you and steals it from you, practically sucks it right out of your mouth as she crushes your lips together. Your teeth awkwardly clack against hers, but it isn’t a bad first kiss, you imagine, because it makes your head swim, your vision explode, and your stomach tie itself in knots. Your next kiss is far, far better, and the third is better still. The ones that follow you can’t count, but they’re pretty good, too. 

Your walk used to be lonely, if you’re being honest with yourself, and kind of boring. It was your escape from a life you hadn’t chosen. Now, it’s a step down a path with the girl you can’t imagine spending another second of your life without, and you couldn’t be happier.


End file.
